


screaming bright

by Areiton, VerdantMoth



Series: Together Alone [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Everyone is damaged, Fluff, Happy Ending, Kinda, Loki & Peter Parker Friendship, Loki is trying to be good, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Self-Harm, Sensory Overload, Sex, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-07 00:10:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18227273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton, https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: The world comes back to life slowly, with a hesitance to believe that Tony actually understands. He sits in his big bed, and watches Peter next to him, the slow measured breathing, and he thinks--this can’t be real.They can’t have actually won.





	1. Chapter 1

The Grey, Peter calls it. 

He shivers in Tony’s arms, clinging tight, tight, tight, and whispers, “Don’t let me go.” 

Tony doesn’t answer, can’t answer. His boy is back, safe in his arms, ancient and untouched and he doesn’t think he’ll ever let go. 

 

~*~

 

The world comes back to life slowly, with a hesitance to believe that Tony actually understands. He sits in his big bed, and watches Peter next to him, the slow measured breathing, and he thinks--this can’t be real. 

They can’t have actually won. 

But Peter is there, close, warm and clinging to him, and the shadows under his eyes and long hair--those are all real. 

Peter begs him not to let go, and Tony thinks--doesn’t say, but thinks--he won’t. He can’t.

 

~*~

 

He doesn’t help bring the world back to life. 

He did his part, and now, Peter is here and in his arms and he thinks the rest of the world can sort it’s own shit out, for once. 

He takes Peter to bed, or maybe it’s the other way around--it doesn’t truly matter. They’re together, and happy, and if Peter cries a little, during the night, while Tony holds him, he doesn’t press, and he doesn’t ask about Tony’s tears. 

 

~*~

 

Peter doesn’t talk, at first. He clings and sometimes, it’s like he’s afraid to let Tony out of his sight, staying with him at all times. 

Sometimes, he shakes, his head buried in Tony’s chest, his hands clenched in his shirt, hidden under the blankets, and tears in his eyes. 

“It hurts,” he whispers. “It’s so  _ loud. _ ” 

That is the first thing Tony learns about the Grey--it was quiet, muffled, still. 

The world is too loud, sometimes. 

“I miss the quiet,” he confides, one night, drowsy against Tony’s chest. 

It makes his heart clench, makes fear bubble up and he says, shaky, “Do you miss--”

Peter shifts, straddles him and pushes him down, harder than Tony thinks he means to. 

He forgets sometimes, his strength. 

“ _ No,”  _ Peter says, harsh and implacable. “Never.” 

 

~*~

 

Loki is...a problem. 

He knew Thor loved him, knew it in the desperation that drove Thor, the same desperation that drove him. 

But now he’s back, and he’s silent, and drained. 

And sometimes. 

Sometimes, he’ll walk into a room, and find Loki, his arms around Peter, clinging to the boy like he is all that is holding Loki to this world. 

Sometimes, he wonders if Peter is. 

 

~*~

 

When Peter fell through the fog and lighting, he fell through alone, fell through and into Tony’s arms, shaking and solid and unbelievable. 

But then he ripped himself free of Tony and almost threw himself back into that damnable fog, and he  _ pulled _ Loki free. 

They don’t talk about it--not him, not Thor, not Loki or Peter. 

But it’s sitting there, under the surface, lingering like rocks waiting to be crashed upon. 

 

~*~

 

He makes earplugs. 

When he first presents them to Peter, the look on his boy’s face is childlike wonder and heartbreaking gratitude. “You can chose,” he says, “what you want to hear.” 

Peter presses a hand against his chest, against the steady thump of his heartbeat. “I want to hear this.” 

Tony can’t speak, has no words for that, just nods, and shows Peter what to do.

 

~*~

 

Peter tells him. 

It takes him months, to tell him everything, over nights when they’re sticky and sweaty and sated, and nights when Peter trembles and clings to him, nights when Tony does the same. 

But he tells him. 

About the empty loneliness of it, about fading into nothing, and existing in nothing, and Loki. 

He tells him about Loki and the god’s cruelty, the way Loki’s hair slipped between his fingers, the way he smiled and the way he held Peter. 

He loved Loki. Tony knows it’s irrational to be jealous--but he is. 

Peter smiles, and pulls him down, between his spread legs, and sighs as Tony fills him, holds him tight as Tony fucks him, slow and measured, and claiming. 

He sucks marks on Peter’s long bare neck, in the soft skin of his ribs and thighs after, and refuses to think about the god of mischief and his boy. 

 

~*~

 

Thor worries. 

Incessantly. 

So does Peter. 

Tony watches them, and he watches Loki, the way the god moves, fragile, through the world. He hates the god for making him care, for making  _ them _ care. 

He builds a second pair of earplugs and gruffly offers them to Loki and ignores the shining gratitude in Thor and Peter’s eyes. 

 

~*~

 

“He talked about you,” Loki says, one night. He’s wandering, the way he does when the night is deepest and neither he nor Tony can sleep, when Peter is tucked comfortable in his big warm bed. 

Tony looks at him. 

“I protected him. I tried to protect them all,” he says, and his eyes are wide and distant, like he is seeing something Tony can’t. 

Tony’s stomach plunges. “You kept him alive,” he whispers and Loki blinks, stares at him. Smiles, something small and frail, with a hint of bitterness. 

“You saved him,” Tony rasps and Loki laughs. 

It’s loud and the closest he’s sounded to Before in all the time he’s been back. 

“No. Any saving that was done, was done by your Spider.” 

 

~*~

The world comes back to life. It feels like a slow thaw, shaking the throes of winter with a slow stretch. Loki adjusts slowly, Peter less so. The world comes back to life, and Tony looks at him, at his boy who he adores, who he would keep close, always and says, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” 

Peter smiles, and kisses his cheek, and says, “I know.” 

 

~*~

 

Sometimes, Tony will find Loki shaking, shaking, shaking, and Peter, near him, close but not quite touching, and his voice is a low ramble, about nothing, and he watches them. 

How often, did this scene play out in that world they don’t talk about, and how many didn’t have anyone. 

Loki doesn’t say it--he is quiet near everyone but Thor and Peter--but he knows. 

Peter saved Loki. 

But the Grey--the Grey saved them all, and that was Loki’s doing. 

 

~*~

 

The first time he sees the cocoon, he isn’t sure what he’s seeing. It’s a large shapeless lump in the corner of the ceiling, and Thor is across from it, sitting on the ground, patient. 

Waiting. 

“Loki?” Tony murmurs, and sits himself next to the god. 

“And Peter,” Thor says. 

They stay there, patiently waiting, for hours. 

“They’re ok,” Tony says, once, and it feels like a question. 

Thor glances at him, his eye bright and nods. “They will be.” 

 

~*~

 

Peter works in his shop and he sleeps in his bed, and he smiles, sometimes. 

He watches Tony, eyes bright and sharp and present--but when he thinks Tony isn’t looking--he fades. 

“You don’t have to be ok,” Tony tells him, when he finds him, sitting on the edge of the roof, staring out over the city. 

It’s different, now, the skyline touched like everything else by the Snap. 

“I am ok,” Peter says, and Tony touches his hand, pulls his fist open, to see the bloody crescents on his palm. 

Peter tugs a little, trying to pull away and Tony pulls his hand up, kisses each cut and says, his voice hoarse, “You don’t have to be ok, baby. Just be here.” 

Peter stares at him, and he sees everything Peter is trying to hide and he is more scared than he was on Titan, when his hands were still coated in ash. 

 

~*~

 

Peter  _ cares _ . 

Deeply. And Tony thinks maybe that is killing him. 

 

~*~

 

It comes out in fits and starts--the way he would chatter to cheer Loki up, in the Grey, the way he sometimes wandered and tried to help others lost in the Grey, the panic he felt when he thought he’d have to leave Loki behind. 

The fear and worry over Tony that never quite went away. 

The fear and worry now, that consumes every moment. 

“He isn’t ok,” Peter gasps, and his hands shake. “No one is, and I have to--I have to be.” 

“You don’t, Pete,” Tony says, holds him close, and Peter sobs at the touch but curls into it, presses closer. “None of us are ok,” he whispers. “We have to be better together.” 

 

~*~

 

It doesn’t get better. 

Not overnight, not immediately. Sometimes, he still finds Peter shaking and staring into nothing. 

Sometimes he still finds blood under Peter’s nails and fresh healed cuts on his palms. 

Sometimes, Peter sits on the edge of the roof and Tony wonders if he could catch him, if Peter fell. 

But--

Peter blinks and smiles at him. Peter reaches out a bloody hand to him and lets Tony clean his fingers, bandage his hand. Peter turns and opens his arms, and leans back into Tony’s embrace. 

It doesn’t get better overnight--but he thinks maybe eventually they’ll all be ok. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Loki called it the Grey, in part because of its strange, heavy colorlessness. Mostly though, he called it that because of how he felt. Empty, abstract,  _ forgotten _ . Even when Peter’d come barralling in. 

 

He hated the Grey.

 

He  _ misses _ the Grey. The sun shines bright, burns into his bare shoulders and sweat drips down his neck. He runs a hand through his hair, startled as usual, by the short locks. He frowns, remembering the strange way his hair had grown before, the weight of the braid between his shoulders. 

 

No one had been willing to take the sheers to the greasy thing, until Peter had stepped forward and calmly draped a towel around him. Loki had worried about the small tremors in his hands, but not enough to stop him.

 

He likes his new look, mostly, especially since Thor went and cut off his own hair. But the sun bangs against his scalp and his hair sticks to his forehead and New York is fucking loud. 

  
Chaotic. Smelly.  _ Busy. _

 

The world is a weird place now. They got so many back. After.

  
After tears and sex and questions. 

 

They got so many back, but so many are still just… 

 

Loki knows he needs to enter the building. Tony has more questions. Not everyone was alone in the Grey. And he wonders how much Peter hates him when he realizes what Loki took from him. He’s not sure how he did it, but he knows he must’ve done something. 

 

The Grey let others wander, move. 

 

It doesn’t matter how or why. He keeps telling Tony this. The Grey isn’t just a place, it’s… not sentient, not exactly. But the Grey had its own way of doing things. 

 

That’s why everyone from the Grey wanders lost in the Real. It’s heavy. It’s loud. It’s bright. It’s  _ too much. _

 

Thor steps beside him and Loki absently reaches for his hand, for that contact. Thor doesn’t quite flinch, not anymore, but his fingers are too tight around Loki’s palm. He’s afraid, as always, that when Loki lets go this time, he won’t grip it again. That they’ll go back to before. 

 

Loki squeezes just as tight, afraid he’ll float here. 

 

“You don’t have too,” Thor says soft. He presses a kiss to Loki’s ear, here in front of everyone, and Loki shudders, suddenly cold despite the heat. 

 

“I know,” he whispers. And he does. He could walk away, blink away, disappear. Leave Peter and Tony and Thor to figure out things on their own. No one would judge him; no more than they used to. But the Grey broke him, and he  _ wants _ to help.

 

He snatches his shirt back and slips it on, almost whimpering without the real sensation of the sun.

 

-

 

Tony doesn’t like him. 

 

He doesn’t hate him, but he doesn’t like him. 

 

Because Peter told him  _ everything  _ about the Grey. Things Loki can’t bring himself to think of, even still. Fever Dream, someone calls the nightmares. 

 

Broken half images, phantom tinglings. He bolts up in bed, gasping, weeping, reaching for Thor. His brother holds him close, wraps his arms around Loki and hums into his ears. 

 

“I can’t remember that song,” Loki whimpers. 

 

Thor doesn’t answer as he rocks them, as Loki’s fingers count across his ribs, down his spine. He doesn’t stop singing, because he knows the air is too loud and the sheets too soft. They cut into Loki, dig the blood from his heart. 

 

When Loki can breath again, when he can see more than endless fog, he tries to say, “I don’t remember that song.” 

 

Thor looks at him, eyes sad but lips upturned. “It wasn’t one you’d have heard, Loki. You haven’t lost everything.”

 

-

 

Tony builds him earplugs. They fit perfectly in his ears, hidden from everyone, and he can choose what kinds of sounds to filter out. Chirping and engines, swirling beverages, pants and shirts rubbing together. It’s amazing how much noise there is around him, constantly. 

 

He never blocks Thor’s voice out, never silences the rain, but his head explodes, pain starbursting behind his eyes everytime he leaves the soundproof lab. 

 

He hates it, but he feels so much worse for Peter, with his enhanced senses. 

 

It’s not as bad as how  _ heavy _ things feel. He doesn’t know how to explain how weightless, how floaty he felt before. 

 

Tony hands him a small white pill once, when his heart beats too fast and air won’t move in his lungs. It melts beneath his tongue and it’s so bitter he almost vomits, bile carving between his jaws, but then it hits, slinks over him like silk sheets and for a moment he feels weightless.

 

Part of hims is worried at how much of him sinks into the floaty feeling. He thinks he should be more concerned; should hate the feeling. 

 

Thor’s hands on his shoulders keep him tethered to earth.

 

He takes the orange bottle Tony offers him, shame like electricity cackling in his veins, and Thor’s weight against his back, his face buried into the pillows. 

 

-

 

Sometimes he creeps into Tony Stark’s lab. He waltzes past AI and alarms and he pretends it’s his old talent and not Peter’s handiwork. 

 

Everyone is busy. Eating lunch, planning charts, having sex. Whatever it is people do once the world’s been saved and restarted. 

 

Peter is there though, eyes distant and hands trembling above the metal he’s working. He doesn’t turn when Loki enters, even though Loki knows he heard him. They hear everything, now.

 

Peter waits until Loki is standing beside him, staring at the wall and trying to fade that he turns to him. “I thought you were getting better.” 

 

Loki looks at his hands, “I thought you were better.”

 

Peter snorts at him, but he pushes himself away from the workbench. “Not in the lab,” he says, and leads Loki into a garden. 

 

Loki resolutely does not watch him work, until Peter holds out his hand, pulls him into the cocoon. They sit, shoulder to shoulder in silence. For a while, Loki feels like he is the on the edge of a dream he almost wants to chase. It’s quiet in the cocoon. Sealed tight against the world. Loki breathes in deeply and all he can smell is the lingering traces of web, iron, Thor’s aftershave.

 

Peter brushes his knuckles over Loki’s and he opens his eyes with a sigh.

 

“Do you miss it?” Peter asks, after Loki has cut them out. After he has left him among the rain and the leaves and the moonlight. 

 

Neither of them really want an answer. 

 

-

 

Peter yanked Loki through whatever portal brought them home. Thor called him out of the Grey though. 

 

The first few days he let him wander, let him hide in the corner and sit under the hot spray of the shower. 

 

Until he walked in one morning, and  _ pulled _ . Pulled him up, pulled him out of his gore dusted clothing, pulled the knots from his hair and the sobs from his chest. 

 

Thor’s hands, big and calloused, braced against his hips, firm and bruising and grounding, pulled  _ life _ from him. Orgasms, too, but mostly life. 

 

And then Loki was back, smiling and laughing. His magic, lost in the Grey, never really did return. Sometimes he can feel it lurking in his veins, mercury burning through him, but he can’t get to it.

He doesn’t crave it.  

 

Thor says he just needs time. Tony calls it trauma, and even though his voice is mocking his eyes are soft. 

 

They both offer him amber liquid and they look the other way when white tablets dissolve beneath his tongue.

 

Thor is vicious when they spar though. “If you have nothing but flesh and bone to protect you, then you must learn to use it the way you used your magic.”

 

Again and again and again Loki’s back slams into the mat, until everything aches the way he never did before. 

 

His back pops once, pain shooting through his neck and for just a moment, a single abstract second he can hear his throat closing again. 

 

He doesn’t flee, not immediately, because Loki doesn’t run anymore. But when Thor’s snores echo in their room, when the weight of the thick duvet isn't enough, he finds himself padding down the hall, fingers weaving through the air, trying to open a door. 

 

Peter finds him somewhere in Central Park, crouched below the trees trying to dig the cicadas out of his ears. His mouth taste like ash, from the cigarettes he inhales now, but the  spider doesn’t even try to lift him up, just builds a shell around them and sits. 

 

Time is very real outside of the Grey, and Peter wears a watch that ticks loudly. Tony tweaked it, so the sounds bounces around them in the shell. Loki doesn’t quite match his breathing to it, but he grounds himself in the  _ tick tick tick _ , until he can see the brown of Peter’s hair and the green of his own sneakers. 

 

He hates sneakers. Such stupid human shoes. 

 

He looks into brown eyes, searching, but there’s nothing to be found in Peter’s absent gaze. 

 

His mouth taste like ash and it’s disgustingly familiar, but he leans into the flavor like picking an old scab. 

 

-

 

Loki is afraid he’s going to go soft. He is always hungry these days, and everything taste good. Thor swings by a diner on the way to the lab, buys them too many fries and burgers, and strawberry-chocolate shakes. 

 

Loki forces himself to share, but the grease against his lips and the oil on his hands is relaxing. Enticing.  “We ate good on Asgard,” he begins.

 

Thor smiles at him, “but nothing like this.” 

 

Thor acclimates to Midgard well. He finds work building things, running sites, and he takes pleasure in being worshipped in a different way. They like him for what he does and not who he is. 

 

Such a strange concept, Loki thinks, watching Thor lift a beam no one around him could. Thor glances up, throws him a wide and disarming grin. 

Loki smiles something small, almost timid, back, leans against the car Tony has let them borrow. His brother waves him over and Loki goes hesitantly.

 

Thor wraps his arm around Loki, laughing about some nonsense thing. Loki wrinkles his nose because Thor reeks, but he curls into him and tries to smile. 

 

It’s nice and mundane, and Loki feels almost content. 

 

-

 

It’s confusing at first. Thor’s hands are on him, and he keeps saying “I love you.” It can’t be real because they don’t say it out loud, but he can feel every callous and scar on Thor’s palms and he can smell the coffee he must’ve just drunk. 

 

Behind him he can hear Tony and Peter but he doesn’t care about them, not really. He grabs Thor’s jaw, runs his hands over spiky hair and the eye he doesn’t recognize. 

 

They hold each other, and neither of them are crying yet, but Loki can tell it’ll happen. 

 

Thor leads him out, walks him down streets he half remembers and into a room stale and dusty. Thor throws open a window and pulls back the sheets and he strips Loki in a methodical way and shoves him into a shower. 

 

He tries to convince Loki to get into the bed once he’s dressed in soft pants that scrape his skin. Loki isn’t tired. Not exactly. 

 

He’s been tired since the Grey took him, but he’s not sure he’ll ever sleep. Thor does, snoring in the bed, and Loki watches him closely. Occasionally he runs a finger down his side, just because he’s real, and Thor shifts, breathes funny, and Loki shuts his eyes.

 

He counts the heartbeats, rhythmic and new.

 

-

 

The first time he’d gone to Peter, shaking and babbling, Tony had tried to send him away. Because Peter was doing what they expected them too; finding his place and fitting in. Peter was coping and talking and sleeping. 

 

But Loki could see the way his hands shook sometimes, and the emptiness behind his eyes when it got to be too much. 

 

Loki recognized it, knew Peter could see the same thing in him, so he barged past Tony and stood in front of a spider caught in the open. 

 

Peter had always been good for him in the Grey. 

 

Peter was good for him in the Real, too, spinning a webbed cocoon, just for a little bit so everything would get quiet and distant again. 

 

They don’t talk in the cocoon. 

 

Loki never really  talks anymore.

 

-

 

The first time Loki took Thor to bed, he’s not sure who either of them were seeing.  

 

They don’t talk about what they both know. They relearn each other, soft and gentle. There’s nothing timid in the way Loki rides Thor, in the hands braced against broad shoulders and the teeth digging into collarbones. 

 

They don’t battle either. Thor explores Loki, who went sharp in the grey. He cuts his palms over his brother’s hips and his fingers across his knees. 

 

It’s different now, not competing, not demanding control. They are equals, broken and healing, and when Loki collapses against his brother’s chest, sweaty and sated, he doesn’t feel the need to flee. 

 

Even when Thor asks him, gently, “Tell me about it?” 

 

Loki doesn’t, but it doesn’t bother Thor. His brother mumbles about sports and music and rebuilding. He talks quietly, lets Loki get used to the cadence of his voice. 

 

Loki wakes up the next morning, stiff and sticky, and shocked to find he hadn’t dreamed at all.

 

Thor smiles at him, sunlight catching on his bright yellow shirt, and hands him a plastic wrapped biscuit with salty ham and bitter mustard on it. 

 

Loki wolfs it down, and Thor gives him three more. 

 

-

 

Tony doesn’t like him, but he doesn’t hate him.

 

He worries about him. “You need to do something, Loki. Feel useful.” 

 

Loki doesn’t disagree, so he takes the card Tony gives him and he starts stacking books on shelves

.

The work is simple. It keeps him busy, keeps him occupied. At first all he does is stack the books, check them out. But then there’s a kid, and he flashes back to a strange haze-dream. 

 

One where he could hear someone else, almost see them. The kid has the same faded pallor he’s seen in so many, but there’s a loneliness in him that Loki has only seen in a handful. 

 

“Did,” Loki begins, but the kid shakes his head. He hands Loki a book, a stupid thing about a spotted dog, and Loki flounders. 

 

The kid pushes him into a plush chair and settles in his lap, warm and not too heavy. He stares at him with dead, expectant eyes. 

 

Loki reads. It’s a short little book, mundane and stupid, but it makes the kid happy. He doesn’t quite smile, but there’s a spark in his eyes that Loki recognizes. Misses.  _ Hungers _ for. 

 

He goes home and he doesn’t exactly talk to Thor, but he says, “I think I’ll start a story hour.” 

 

Thor nods like it explains everything and Loki can feel his lips begin to twitch up.

 

-

 

Peter comes sometimes. He sits in the corner as Loki reads whatever nonsense a lost child picks out. 

 

Lots of kids come, all ages, all sizes. But there’s a quiet understanding about which kids get to pick the books. 

 

Everyone lost someone in the snap, but only some of them had to make it through mostly alone. They never pick the books Loki expects. There are no stories of heroes and champions, no ballads or battles. 

 

They want to know about the dogs who made it home and the kids in underpants. They want simple, happy, silly stories about kids who live in boxes and twins who use magic. Fairytales with soft endings and kids who grow up happy.

 

He doesn’t usually need Peter after, but once, a girl who won’t speak wants to hear the story of a kid lost in a foreign land. One who made friends with all manner of beast, and Loki, he can’t remember if the kid was ever found.

 

Peter held him that time. Loki doesn’t know which of them was shaking harder, but minutes, hours, days, later Tony and Thor rip them from the casing. 

 

“You’re here, you’re home, you’re safe,” Thor repeats, over and over, hands squeezing too tight against his arms. 

 

Loki kisses him, wants to inhale the salty bitter flavor. “Don’t ever let me go again,” he says, begs. 

 

-

 

Rarely, a kid brings Loki a story he just doesn’t want to read. Something dark, something dismal, something that ends without hope. 

 

But he understands the need, when the kid brings him a story that’ll break everyone, he can see the same desperation in red-rimmed and heavily bagged eyes. He reads quiet, reads soft, reads so that others know this is not for everyone.

 

They’re usually older, the ones with the empty stories. Older, thinner,  _ greyer _ . 

 

Those are the days he catches Thor’s eyes, begs him to stay. Those are the days he hopes Peter doesn’t. 

 

A kid brings him a book, a girl with blue-violet eyes and chapped lips, and he’s sure his face has too much sympathy but she squares her shoulders and hands him the battered pages. Loki glances up and he sees something that hurts in the best way.

 

Peter smiles at him, gauze wrapped hand flicked his direction, and Loki doesn’t quite have words to explain how  _ colorful _ the little gemstone spider is. 

 

Well, not little anymore, as he leans against Tony, and sometimes it shocks Loki. Tony looks at him with fear, jealousy, despair, and always always hope.

 

So he reads the girl a story that makes salt burn against his lips, and when she quietly hands him one with sunflowers on the cover he gladly reads it too. She leaves, a little brighter, a little perk in her step and Loki stares after her, trying to find that same release. 

 

To let go, simple as that; one sad story and then a happier one.

 

Thor settles next to him the way he does after heavier books. He’s a warm, solid weight on Loki’s left, a slightly sweaty tether in his palm. The cushion to his right shifts, and Loki turns startled to see Tony sitting quietly. He crosses an ankle over his knee and offers Loki a nod. 

 

It’s not quite friendship, but there is an understanding, and when Peter settles against his hip, nestled too tight between his lover and Loki, they all know. 

 

Peter will offer, because he is Peter and he cares, and he cares for, but Loki will say no. Not anymore. 

 

He’s tired, and almost out of stories for the day, but he remembers one from when he was a smile child, still on his mother’s knee.

 

So he opens his mouth and out spills a warrior who walked away from battle to save a child too small for cruelty. Out comes a field of impossible beast, fantastical flowers, and kindness. As all stories have, there’s a storm, and a boy who loves too much not to sacrifice everything. And he’s crying again, as the warrior picks up a sword coated in rust, as he sheds the blood that should’ve been spilt long ago. 

 

Thor holds his hand and they remember a field where it thunders only one day a year, where rain and lightning only strike for a few hours on that day.

 

The couch is bright, and the weight of Thor and Peter and even Tony heavy and warm, and it feelspo more solid, less abstract than the Grey, but familiar all the same.

 

He finishes his tale and he’s surprised how the tears don’t cut the way they did before. He feels, not peace exactly, he’s not sure he’s ever really felt that. But he feels like he’s finally real. Solid.  _ Home. _

 

-

 

 

Loki reads to the kids most afternoons. He watches them grow up, watches dead eyes sparkle with new life. The storys shift, over time, because heros will always be needed.

 

The world rebuilds itself, settles. Loki spends a lot of time in the sun, feeling the heat against his skin, and after long years he loses the taste for grease and oil, but never cheese.

 

He doesn’t talk much, because his voice is too loud in his head. He does grow his hair out, but not quite as long. 

 

Thor smiles against his temple, holds his hand as they walk through parks, and in quiet moments, in loud moments, he leans against Thor and whispers, “I love you.”

 

Thor smiles at him, winks, and whispers, “I found you.” 

 

Sometimes he drowns in everything. The sun and the wind and the cars and the noise and the smells and he can’t find himself in all of the chaos. 

 

Sometimes he needs to go away, to where the world is quiet, is grey, is empty. 

 

Thor doesn’t get it. 

 

But he doesn’t begrudge him anything either, and when Loki feels like he won’t float away, when sounds aren’t screaming around his skull again, he follows Thor into a lab and he tries to explain how he found the Grey, built the Grey, called the lost souls to the only safe place he knew. 

 

He doesn’t regret it, not exactly. 

 

He doesn’t ever want to go back, either. 


End file.
